


Need To Be

by unluckyrose



Category: Original Work
Genre: A little gore, Ambiguous Main Character, Ghosts, Possession, Sadness, i don't usually post my original work but eh what's the harm, i just kinda want this somewhere, i mean it gets kinda gross but it's not described in horrible detail, none of the characters except one are even named
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8089237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unluckyrose/pseuds/unluckyrose
Summary: I was talking and talking and I didn't see the car. It was like I was so wrapped up in how terrible my life was I didn't even notice I was about to trip and fall into a grave.
I don't even remember feeling any pain. I don't remember being hit, I don't remember falling, I don't remember screaming in pain or my head smashing into the concrete hard enough to crack. I just remember a horrible fear and a foreboding feeling, then I was back on the sidewalk.





	

My mind was getting away from me again, traveling far from the subject at hand. I did this often; I found it hard to be here and be myself all the time. It was all too common to find me staring into space, lost in daydreams or memories. It seemed to be happening even more often lately, though. Not even the sharp sting of the wind or the rough bricks of the wall I was leaning against could pull me out of my thoughts right now. I couldn't feel it anyway; all my nerves were dead.

Though I really should have been paying attention to the sidewalk, which I had concealed myself from in an alley to watch for pedestrians without being seen, I couldn't focus. I was thinking about everything. How I had gotten to this point, all the decisions I made that brought me here, what would happen after this. I had way too much on my mind to focus on listening for footsteps.

I thought about how this had first started. I was on my phone, just walking home from work, talking to my friend and complaining about everything. How hot it was, how little free time I had, how little sleep I got, how I had to go hang out with my family the next day, how my brother would probably make me play that stupid racing video game of his again, how my father would rant for hours about things I didn't care about or understand, how my mother would bother me about my future. I was talking and talking and I didn't see the car. It was like I was so wrapped up in how terrible my life was I didn't even notice I was about to trip and fall into a grave.

I don't even remember feeling any pain. I don't remember being hit, I don't remember falling, I don't remember screaming in pain or my head smashing into the concrete hard enough to crack. I just remember a horrible fear and a foreboding feeling, then I was back on the sidewalk. I no longer had my phone; it was shattered beyond repair, bits of circuitry strewn across the road. My eyes had fallen on the broken phone, then traveled to the wrecked car, then to the slowly gathering crowd of people and one stranger yelling something about an accident into their phone. It hit me what had happened, but I refused to let my eyes drift to the body yet.

It wasn't long before the ambulance came, sirens slicing through the chaos and causing the crowd to part and move off the road. I couldn't do anything but stare at the sidewalk beneath my feet, unwilling to observe the situation any more than I already had. I didn't know what I was doing standing on the sidewalk when I was clearly dead. I wasn't looking at my body, but I knew I was dead. The fact that I could literally see the sidewalk beneath my feet was a dead giveaway.

I stayed, staring at the ground with clenched fists and burning eyes and a tight throat, lost in my thoughts of how my friend must have reacted when our call was suddenly cut off and what my family would do when they found out, until I heard the ambulance doors close. Only then did I look up. The street had deep scarlet stains. I thought I would throw up, but dead things can't vomit.

What could I even do now? I was dead. I had so many questions. Was this really it? I had plans, I had a family, I had friends, I had a job and classes to take and people to meet and a goals to fulfill and a life to live but that was all gone now, gone and I had no clue what could even be next for me. What could be next when you're invisible and intangible and for all intents and purposes gone, gone in every way that matters. Gone except I was still there, still here, still in this city on that sidewalk just feet away from the car that had taken my life so quickly. Gone enough for my friends and family to cry over my loss and not there enough to console them, there enough to see everything I lost in one moment of inattention but not gone enough to be spared the misery of watching it all slip out of my grasp.

I was then taken out of this miserable spiral by a tugging I felt in my chest. I almost didn't notice it at first, but then it grew stronger and stronger until I had to step forward to avoid being pulled over. In a moment of panic I flailed my hands in front of my chest, as if trying to remove a rope or chain that might have been yanking me forwards. There was nothing there, and the pulling just got more urgent. Then it actually knocked me over, dragging me across the hard stone of the road and towards the ambulance as it drove away.

I struggled against it, expecting pain as I was road-hauled. However, I calmed when I realized I didn't feel any pain at all. Of course, I didn't have a body anymore so I didn't have a nervous system. Once I had calmed enough and allowed myself to be dragged along after the ambulance, I saw the humor in the situation. Suddenly, laughter rose from my chest. I was laughing so hard my whole body was shaking and my eyes were pouring tears and the noise was sharp and loud in my ears. Why was this happening to me? On top of everything, I was now being dragged away by some unknown entity?

It didn't take long for the ambulance and my body (and me, as I was apparently brought along for the ride) to make it to the hospital. I stood as soon the pulling stopped, and focused on a rock on the ground so I didn't have to watch as they took my body out and carried it into the building. I still followed them, though. I had no where else to go.

I remember sitting in a chair outside my operating room, twiddling my thumbs and dwelling in my own misery. That was when someone finally spoke to me. “Oh no, not another new one,” a woman nearby said. I didn't look up, assuming she wasn't talking to me. “You there, in the chair. Come here.”

I raised my head and found a tall woman with curly black hair standing on the other side of the hallway, arms crossed but eyes kind. “Are... you talking to me?” I asked, standing up.

She nodded. “Yeah, I'm talking to you.” I walked slowly over to her, not making eye contact. I could feel my hands shaking so I stuffed them in my pockets. Who could this woman be? I was afraid to ask. I wasn't sure why, but I just couldn't voice any of the millions of questions rolling around my mind at the time.

Luckily, she answered one of them the second she opened her mouth again. “I'm Ariel. I'm dead too.”

“Dead too?!” I repeated, much more loudly than I had intended.

Ariel chuckled, smirking. “Yep. Hey, I've never been very good at this, welcoming new spirits thing. Not even after all this time. But I can try.” She cleared her throat and waved a hand towards my operating room. “You're dead, pal.” I probably would have laughed at her lack of tact but I couldn't properly form responses to anything at the time. “I, um. Huh. I don't know what else to really say. You're dead but you've got some cool ghost powers, and you're in a hospital so you've got tons of other dead people to hang with. That's about it.”

I stared blankly at her. How does one respond to being told they're a ghost in the worst way possible? Not that I hadn't already figured it out, but this girl's awkwardness was just so out of place for the situation. She smiled widely at me, waiting for some sort of response. I swallowed and forced myself to say something. “Thank you, Ariel.”

That was not the response she was looking for, clearly, because her smile shrank. I had no idea what response she had been expecting to that introduction to the world of being dead. “It's depressing to just hang around your body, let's go find someone else to talk to.” She turned and motioned for me to follow her. Eager to get away from my body and hoping for more explanation, I jogged after her. However, we weren't even at the end of the hallway before I was tugged backwards and fell on my backside.

Ariel halted and raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged. Her eyes widened and she whispered, “Oh.” Then louder she said, “You're not completely dead yet. Oh, that sucks.”

I frowned. I didn't have to say anything before she had already answered what I was going to ask. “I mean, not that it's bad you're still alive. Kind of.” She waved her hands as she quickly backtracked, “I mean, you're still dead. I'm not explaining this very well...” I rolled my eyes at her. “Um, okay,” she tried again, “you're actually dead. Your spirit has left your body fully enough that you're actually a ghost, but you haven't fully detached from your body yet. Your body can still heal, but you're effectively dead. So you're just a ghost tied to a dead body, really.”

“I'm in a coma?” I said, finding my voice.

She shrugged. “For now. I guess we can stay by your room until your body dies.”

We walked back the chairs outside my room and sat. The next few hours after that became a blur, with me mostly staring at the floor and dreading what would happen when my family and friends came to visit. Would they have a chance before my body died? I was hit with another wave of nausea, my stomach churning and my head feeling so light I thought I would fall over. I might have voiced that I felt like this at some point, because Ariel explained that things like nausea are mostly phantom sensations from being alive and that they would go away after I got used to being dead. I suddenly clung to the horrible feeling and hoped it would never go away.

“Uh, what ghost powers do I have, exactly?” I asked Ariel, if only to get my mind off my failing body only one wall away.

“Oh,” Ariel perked up, for she had been getting quieter and quieter as I remained miserable the whole conversation. “Lots of powers! We can walk through walls, teleport, posses inanimate objects, float, and some more stuff but those are the interesting ones.”

“How?” I asked.

“Hmm, well... I don't know really, it just kinda happens.” She focused her gaze on a painting in the hallway. It was bright and colorful, as if it was trying to combat the usual hopelessness of hospitals with eye-assaulting yellows and a smiling faces. Suddenly, I had blinked and she was gone. I quickly looked to the painting. It glowed a faint blue hue and started vibrating violently. It shook so hard I thought I could feel my chair shaking beneath me, even though I didn't actually have the nerves to feel anything. Finally, the painting shook itself off the wall and landed on the floor with a loud thud.

Ariel was suddenly in the chair next to me again, smiling excitedly. “See? I just possessed that thing.”

My eyes got wide. “Really?”

“Yep. You just need to want it to happen, and it happens. Or, like, feel like you need it to happen? It's hard to explain, but you'll get it. That's true with any ghost power, really.”

My eyes slid past her and landed on someone running up the hallway towards us. My heart fell and my mouth dropped open. No, no I could not handle this yet. I stood quickly and tried to back away, but the pull of my body stopped me from going very far. My heart beat a mile a minute and I felt tears running down my cheeks already, but they couldn't obscure the people who skidded to a stop in front of my door.

In a flash, Ariel was beside me, a look of concern set on her face. She looked back at the people now entering my room, and seemed to understand. “You can stay out here,” she suggested, “There's no rule saying you have to... go... witness that.”

However, I shook my head and started towards the open door. I didn't exactly know why. I wanted to avoid them. I knew I couldn't handle going in there and seeing their faces, seeing my own body, seeing them suffer for my distraction. I couldn't watch them suffer because I was gone. But for some reason, I just had to. Not doing it could be so much worse.

When I stepped into the room, I froze. I was still trying my best not to look at my own body, but the only other place to look was at my family's faces. They were gathered around the side of my hospital bed, all with matching looks of grief and horror on their faces. My mother was talking to the doctor, voice wavering despite how hard she was trying to keep it together. Her eyes shone, but she wasn't allowing any tears to escape. I couldn't bring myself to listen to what she was saying. They were probably discussing what happened to me and if I was going to survive. Clearly I wasn't going to.

My father and brother weren't hiding their tears as well my mother was. My brother stood at the end of my bed, a few tears trickling down his face as he focused on the opposite wall and said nothing. My father, on the other hand, was openly sobbing with his face in his hands. He had never been one for hiding his emotions or keeping it together. He could always cry when he was sad. People admired him for it. My mother usually tried to keep it together around others in an attempt to be the strong one. She was always the strong one when I was young and anything bad happened. If there was a bad storm, she would calmly take us to the safest part of the house while my brother and I cried and sobbed about how the storm was going to take us away. Whenever I got a failing grade on a paper and cried that I was stupid and wouldn't make it to college, she would calmly tell me I wasn't stupid and help me through extra studying. She was always calm, the rock of the family. My brother tried to hide his feelings too, probably because of some ridiculous idea like 'boys don't cry', or the idea that it's shameful to cry. As if men didn't have feelings too and they had to suppress them to not be a huge disappointment.

I wondered how long it would take my mother to break. Would she get home, lock herself in the bathroom, and cry while the others thought she was taking a shower? Or would she not even make it that far, breaking into sobs during the car drive home? Or maybe she would last days, but then she would find a picture of me on her phone and it would be the last straw, breaking the dam holding back her tears and making her collapse into sobs wherever she's standing? Would my brother return home and find my favorite video game, a silly sandbox game I left behind when I moved out, and get so lost in memories of us playing it together when he's suddenly struck with the realization that we would never be able to play it again? Would he never be able to play a game like it again without thinking of me? Would my father come across an interesting article and think he should tell me about it next time he sees me, only to remember I'm not around to listen anymore?

I barely heard the doctor explaining I was in terrible condition and there was no way of me pulling through. I did hear the sharp sob from my father, though. That was my breaking point. I fell to the floor, brought my knees to my chest, and hid my face in my arms. I was so stupid. If I had just been looking where I was going, if I had just noticed the car, if I hadn't left work as early as possible and maybe stayed for a minute to talk to my coworkers and just not been there when that car was, if I had taken a different shift, if, if, if. There were so many ways I could have prevented this. One moment of idiocy and it was all gone. I was gone. Gone, gone, gone, that god damn word was all I could think! My opportunities, my family, my life! Gone! And it was all my fault!

I didn't notice when my family left. I didn't notice when the doctor shook his head sadly and slipped out, closing the door behind him. I didn't notice when Ariel phased through the wall, stared at me awkwardly, then sighed and sat on the floor next to me. I didn't notice when she tried to offer words of comfort.

The thing I did notice, after what might have been five minutes or two hours, was what felt like a painful snap. It made me gasp and lift my head so quickly that if I had been corporeal my head would have smacked against the wall. I know I said I didn't have any nerves so I couldn't feel physical pain, but this pain was deeper. It felt like my heart had been ripped out and the force had snapped back against my chest. The pain faded quickly, however, and I was left feeling horribly, horribly empty.

A loud droning noise drew my attention. The monitor over my hospital bed was flat-lining, the last heartbeat quickly disappearing from the screen. Ariel was watching it too. “There goes your body,” she said, tone unreadable. “You're a full ghost now, pal.”

No.

“What?” Ariel frowned at me, and I realized I'd actually said that out loud.

“No, No I'm not.” I stood quickly and stumbled over to my body. “I'm not- I can't be a ghost, Ariel. I can't. My-my family- my friends.” I shakily stood next to my hospital bed, still not looking at my body and focusing on Ariel instead. My voice was filled with desperation, as if hoping she had the answer. If only I could make her understand, she could help me! “My mom is barely keeping it together! My dad, my brother, they-they, they're all _breaking_! They're sad, and-and crying, and it's my fault!” I sniffled and wiped some of the tears off my face, but they were immediately replaced. I vaguely wondered how I even could cry as a ghost, but quickly dismissed the thought in favor of more yelling. “And I had _dreams_ , Ariel! I was going to invent something amazing! I was going to study alongside the best scientists of our time and I was going to go down in history for discovering something important and I was going to make so many new friends and my family and I would be rich and I was going to _live_ , Ariel! Ariel, I can't lose that! I can't lose that all just because I can't watch out for fucking cars!”

Ariel just stood, looking so lost in the face of my breakdown. “Pal, you... you don't have a choice, I'm so sorry,” she said, her voice unsteady as she carefully stepped closer, like I was a frightened animal. “This must be so hard for you, I know. I-I've been around awhile and I've seen a lot of ghosts have trouble but there's nothing you can do but accept it. I'm so, so sorry.”

“I _can't_ accept it!” I sobbed. “I can't be _dead_! I can't be _gone_! That can't be _me_!” I slammed my hands down on the side of my bed and for the first time, finally looked down at my body. I looked surprisingly peaceful. My head was wrapped in bandages, as was my whole chest. I was covered in bruises and small cuts, probably from small rocks in the road and the force of being tossed by the car. Other than the injuries, I might have just been asleep. My face was relaxed, none of the stress lines it usually wore. I wished I could be half as peaceful and relaxed as my body was. Hell, I wished I was back in my body!

“U-um, pal, I think you're messing with the door,” Ariel said carefully. Distantly, outside my little bubble of anger, I heard people banging on the door to the room. Interesting ghost power, to be able to hold doors closed. Not that I cared. I didn't care about anything but getting my life back. I just glared at my body and kept repeating to myself, _I want my life back, I_ need _my life back_.

More than anything, I _needed_ to be back in my body!

And all of a sudden, I was staring up at the ceiling. I blinked several times, trying to understand what had happened. I hadn't fallen unconscious, judging by the same voices on the other side of the door and the continuing drone of the flat-lining monitor no time had passed at all from when I was sobbing next to my bed from now. However, I was suddenly laying down and staring at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and shook my head, as if that would clear things up. My neck made odd cracking sounds when I moved it, and I felt an odd disconnect between my command to move and the actual movements. What was going on?

Ariel gasped. “Oh, no, oh pal you really don't want to do that.” She rushed over and leaned over me where I was laying down.

I opened my mouth to say, “Do what?”, but found it impossible to command my mouth for a moment. Before I could manage that, Ariel had helped me sit up and I'd realized what had happened.

I was in the hospital bed.

I was possessing my own body.

After taking several moments to process this, I smiled widely. Ariel frowned. I coughed until I could get my mouth working again and stretched as I said, “This is great! Ariel, I could go back to my life!”

“No, not-not really,” she said, frown deepening. She was twitching oddly. “You're just a ghost possessing a body. You really shouldn't do that.”

“Why not?” I laughed, pushing myself off the bed. “Now I'm downright immortal! I can't feel pain and I have ghost powers, but I can go back to my job and my career! I can play stupid games with my brother and talk about stupid things with my dad and I can _live_!”

“You can't,” Ariel said, “your wounds won't heal, you won't grow or change, people will notice.”

“So?” I unceremoniously disconnected myself from all the machines and waltzed to the door. “I'm _alive_.” It seemed that as I had calmed down, my hold on the door had weakened. Several people tumbled through the doorway with a loud bang. Two doctors and a nurse had actually fallen on the floor, and two other people who had probably just been passing by and helped with the door were standing just inside. There was a long silence as all five of them stared up at me in amazement. One of them, the doctor who had been treating my body earlier, looked terrified.

I couldn't help but giggle as they scrambled to their feet, pushing me further into the room and shouting profanities and many different versions of “How are you alive?!”. Before they could question me much, I slipped past them and ran out into the hallway. I didn't feel like being the subject of the headline “Medical Wonder: Actual Zombie?”; I just wanted to see my family again and let them see I was okay. I wanted to talk to my friend. I wanted to live.

“You're not the first one to try this, pal!” Ariel called after me as I ran, “It leads to bad places! Please, don't do this!”

I went straight to my parents' house, running the whole way. I didn't even get tired, and I didn't feel my injuries. When I reached the house, I knocked on the door so hard I might have broken it down if it hadn't been answered quickly. When my mother opened the door and saw me, she cried. But I didn't feel as bad about it. She didn't break down her strong wall and start crying over my death, but of relief that I was alive. My brother and my father cried too, and I probably would have cried with them but my body couldn't produce tears like my ghost form could.

I had a nice day with my family. I came up with a fake story about the doctors managing to cure me quickly and just letting me go, and though it didn't look like they believed me, they didn't want to question it. I played as many silly video games with my brother as I could, including the racing one. I talked with my mother about how my life was going. I listened to my father rant about politics and sports and a number of other things I didn't really care about.

I was just happy to be alive again.

I was happy and I was there.

…

It took week for me to start noticing something was wrong. Of course I had already realized I was technically walking around in a dead body. It was hard not to notice the fact I couldn't eat or sleep or any of the usual things a living body would do or require. What I didn't realize was the full implications of being a walking, talking corpse.

I was in my apartment alone, wondering if I should take the day off work to hang out with my friends. While I pondered the idea, I absentmindedly scratched at my arm. I didn't need to of course, because I couldn't itch without nerves, it was more of a force of habit now. It was because of that same lack of nerves that I didn't notice until I raised my hand to tick something off my calendar. When I did see it, I wished I could actually throw up.

There were long, bloody scratches down my arm where my itching had torn the flesh away.

My skin was coming off.

My body was beginning to rot.

I started wearing long sleeves.

Just a day after that, a coworker of mine mentioned that I smelled disgusting and very kindly suggested I take a shower before work next time.

When I got home, I showered and showered and I couldn't even tell if it covered the smell because I couldn't smell anything myself and everything was just worse because the more I scrubbed at my skin the more came off and blood ran down the drain and I wished I could cry.

I sprayed myself with air freshener before I went to work the next day.

Someone still said they smelled something weird.

It wasn't long after that my hair started falling out.

I bought a hat and accepted the compliments on my new style choice with a strained smile.

…

I couldn't take this anymore. I had gotten my life back and it was slipping through my fingers again. I had just thought... I had hoped I could go back to normal. I could live out my life and I could forget about that stupid car, and ghost powers, and Ariel. I wanted so badly for this to work.

But I was living on borrowed time.

After spending an hour locked in my apartment and wishing I could cry after someone mentioned the smell again, I decided I should visit my family. They had always been there for me. Even when I didn't appreciate them or complained about visiting them, they made me feel safe and welcome. That was all I needed right now. I needed to forget I was a ghost in a quickly rotting corpse. I wanted to be a little kid again and play with my brother and eat mom's dinner. Of course, I couldn't actually eat, but that was beside the point.

We all gathered in the living room to watch TV when I showed up. My brother and I sat side-by-side on the couch while my mother took the comfiest armchair and my dad insisted on sitting on the coffee table for some reason. We all laughed at him as he stretched out on the surface like a cat and watched the movie upside-down, and my heart felt lighter than it had since my skin had first come off. I grinned and huddled further into the couch.

About halfway through the comedy we were watching, my brother kicked his feet up onto my end of the couch. I shoved them off, but he put them back immediately, this time deciding to shove them in my face. I grabbed his feet and pushed them away, grumbling at him without any serious anger. Rather than laughing as I expected him too, he frowned. “Why are your hands so cold?” he asked. “They're, like, seriously frozen.”

I quickly let go of his feet and scooted a few inches away. No one had actually touched me since I died, so I hadn't even thought about concealing my non-existent body temperature. “Huh, maybe I'm just getting sick. Whatever,” I said, far too quickly.

My father rolled over on the coffee table and fixed me with a look of concern. “Should I get the thermometer?”

“Low body temperature is usually something pretty serious,” My mother stood up and started walking towards me to feel my forehead. I panicked, leaping up and scrambling over the back of the couch. When my feet hit the floor I flipped around and backed up against the wall. Everyone stared at me, halfway between concern and bewilderment.

“Just let me take your temperature,” my mother insisted, stepping forward again. I was already backed against the wall, so I had no choice but to stand there as she put her hand on my forehead. Her brow furrowed. “You're completely room temperature.”

“Huh, that's weird,” I said, voice starting to shake. My father and brother exchanged confused glances, while my mother grabbed my wrist to check my pulse.

Her eyes widened. “U-um,” she stuttered, “there's no pulse.”

“Heh, maybe you just can't find it. Veins are tricky.” I swallowed nervously. God did I hope she would accept that and just let us go back to the movie.

I didn't have a chance to see if she would let it go, as at that moment my arm tilted just enough for my sleeve to fall back. The second I heard her horrified gasp and felt her hand let go of my wrist, I knew it was over. My borrowed time was up.

“You'r- you're _rotting_!” my mother gasped, stumbling backwards and covering her mouth with her hands.

My brother jumped over the back of the couch and walked towards me, probably to investigate, but my mother grabbed his shoulders and held him back. My father stood, but didn't walk any closer. All three stared at me, and all I could do was stare back.

I knew this would happen, I just didn't want to believe it.

“You're dead,” my mother whispered.

I can't do this. I can't do this again.

“Have you- have you been dead? Since the car?” my father asked.

I couldn't speak. I wished I could cry.

“You're not really my child,” my mother said suddenly, shoving my brother behind her. “You're a monster.”

I couldn't defend myself. Didn't she understand? Didn't she get that I was really me?

“My child, my child can't be rotting in front of me. My child wouldn't do that me.”

I _really_ wished I could cry.

“I thought it was some sort of miracle! I thought you were really back with us!”

_Why can't I cry?_

“But I guess you're really gone. You've been gone this whole time.”

I turned and I ran out of the house.

…

I'm not me anymore. My mother was right. I don't get to be me anymore. I'm dead. I couldn't even pretend to me again for more than two weeks. I'm dead. I'm gone.

I want to be someone else.

I need to be someone else.

So I ran. I ran and I ran and I didn't get tired because my body was a decaying corpse and its life was all used up. This one ran out of borrowed time. I should have known, I _did_ know, that this wouldn't last. I should have listened to Ariel. Would everything have worked out better if I had just stayed with her? I'd never know, because leaving her was just another mistake under my belt. All I was good at was screwing up. If I wasn't so stupid, if I had been paying attention when that car came, if I hadn't tried to go back to my family, if I wasn't just so _stupid_. If only I hadn't insisted on living on borrowed time! But after half an hour of running and deeply wishing I could cry, I came to a halt and realized something.

If I was out of borrowed time.

I just needed to borrow some more.

If I was dead and gone,

I needed to be someone else.

So, as night fell and the streetlights flickered on, I hid myself in an alley so I couldn't be seen from the sidewalk, leaned against a brick wall, and waited. I waited so long I got lost in my thoughts. I was thinking about everything. I thought about hospitals, inventing, Ariel, dreams. I thought about what it really meant to be gone. I thought about how I had gotten to this point, all the decisions I made that brought me here, what would happen after this.

Finally, I heard footsteps and brought myself back to reality. I stealthily leaned to the side to see who it was. It was a random man, twitching at every small sound and glancing around suspiciously. Judging by his outdated nerdy t-shirt and scared appearance, I guessed he didn't get out much. Did this man have friends? Did he play a lot of video games or read a lot of books? Did he get along with his family? What were his plans for the future? Did he make half as many stupid mistakes as I did? Maybe he led a life completely different from the short one I led.

Without any further thought on the matter, I teleported right behind the man shoved him onto the ground. No one heard his yelp of terror before it was cut off.

I wanted to be someone else.

More than anything, I _needed_ to be someone else.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, hope you enjoyed this little product of insomnia, disturbing late night thoughts, and weird talks with friends about ghost possessio


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